Welcome to Twin Speech, Language & Literacy LLC! (Previously known as Twin Sisters Speech and Language Therapy LLC). Our mission is to make original theme based materials that are both useful and fun! We strive to make every single therapy session interactive, enjoyable, and very beneficial! We love being speech therapists and enjoy knowing that our students want to come back each and every week!

Tuesday, February 26, 2013

Enjoy this fun download of free posters and coloring pages for your speech therapy room. We hope that these colorful posters will help to brighten up your work day! There are 13 posters and 3 coloring pages included in this free download. Just go grab them at the TpT and TN store links below.

Were you able to read every word listed above?I bet.Did the whole sentence make sense?Probably not! The nonsense
sentence above is a way to demonstrate that words can be read, but not
comprehended.Words misunderstood or put
in the wrong order = confusion! The best thing would be to be able to
understand what is read.That is what
reading comprehension is. That is why working on reading comprehension is
important and why I was excited for the opportunity to try this new Smarty Ears
Reading Comprehension App out with my speech and language students this week
during therapy.

Several students that I see at the therapy clinic are working on increasing
their reading skills.We focus on
phonemic awareness development, vocabulary advancement, sight word
memorization, reading fluency, and of course, their reading comprehension to
see if they understand what they have read.It is my ultimate wish that these beautiful children will go on to
acquire a love for reading that will carry over into the rest of their
lives.How great it would be if I could
say that I have helped even one of these children overcome their fear of reading and
ultimately gave them a love for reading that helped them to enjoy recreational
reading and also made them into better students!

READING COMPREHENSION CAMP APP HOW TO GUIDE:

1)Press read and import a player in from the Therapy Report Center (a separate app that allows all of your
student data from all of the Smarty Ears apps to be organized in one place), OR
go to the add a reader.

2)After selecting a reader,
click choose a story button.

3)Select the story and
level.The stories are presented in
levels 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5.Level one stories were made for 2nd
and 3rd graders, and level 5 was designed for 6th to 7th
graders.

4)Click settings if you would like the colorful picture that goes with the
story to be large or small and if you would like to change the font size.

5)Press the play button if you would like to hear
the story read.

6)Press the record button if you would like to
record voice while the story is read aloud.

7)Press the quiz button when you are ready for the
quiz.

8)Choose between 12
different types of questions to be asked or choose all of them.The different types are: all, who, what, where, when, why, how, inferences, cause and effect,
compare and contrast, sequencing, vocabulary/context clues.

9)Press start quiz and answer the quiz questions. Select hint button to see part of the text
highlighted that contains the answer to the question, select check to see if the answer given was
correct.A green check will come if the
answer was correct.If the answer
checked was incorrect, the answer will be taken away.

10) Additional cool feature: The ability to record and write your own story, upload your own picture, and develop your own comprehension questions.

CONS:

- My student reader
commented that he found some of the names of the characters to be hard to read
and to understand.He said this about
both stories that he read.For example, “Patricia”
is not a name that he had read before and reading unfamiliar words really throws him off.

- The quiz section
contains a small print size that is hard to read in comparison to the story.

- Only one picture is provided
for each story.

- I was hoping that the fun
camp theme would be brought into the stories, but I did not see it.

PROS:

+ A large
variety of students at varying levels can use this app (2nd grade to
7th).

+ One to four
students can read and be quizzed on the same story at the same time.This is a very nice group therapy feature.

+A nice variety of stories are provided.Most stories are fun, light-hearted and have
some humor.

+ The hint
feature during the quiz phase is very nice for encouraging the student to still
try to find his/or her answer.

+ The ability
to make your own stories is a wonderful tool for making a story more specific
to the child’s life or needs.

+ The play
back feature is a wonderful tool for helping to increase fluency skills and
reading comprehension as it gives the child a chance to re-trace the story
contents one more time.

+ The read the
story feature offers clearly read stories with inflection in the reader voices
at appropriate times, e.g., increased pitch for questions, increase loudness to
show excitement.

+ A wide
variety of comprehension questions and the ability to choose which kinds are
asked is a terrific tool as I can target a specific goal that way.

+ The ability
to increase the font size is very helpful for my younger readers.

+ The ability
to have the results emailed, printed or sent to the Therapy Report Center is
very helpful for keeping track of individual student performance.

WOULD I BUY THIS APP?

I would definitely
buy this app.I was missing out on a
good reading comprehension app and this one will be so nice to have now!Having it will reduce my need to track down,
and print out age level equivalent stories for each and every child that I
see.I love the cute stories, the
colorful pictures, and the recoding ability of the app, the data collecting
feature, and the detailed way it quizzes the students to assess for their
understanding of each story.

Friday, February 22, 2013

Shanda and I would like to share this document with you. It contains information that we have gathered about voice disorders and how to take care of your most important teaching tool - your voice! We do treat voice disorders at our clinic. This document is geared toward the adult population, but many of the same tips for taking care of your voice can be taught to children who are experiencing problems with their voices.

Download this free document from our stores at anytime!

Please let us know if this information was helpful for you. Would you like to see more informational documents like these? If so, could you kindly leave a comment letting us know your thoughts? We would appreciate it very much!

Sunday, February 17, 2013

We hope you are ready for this 100 page EGGSTRAVAGANZA! It is an Easter themed packet featuring a wide variety of speech, language, concepts, and literacy Eggercises! :)Please download the preview to read the three content pages describing what is on every single one of these fun and useful packet pages and to view a ton of the pages provided in this comprehensive packet.We are giving away two of these packets! Please leave your email address and a comment letting us know what pages would be most useful to you. We will pick the winners at the end of the week using our fair and square method of drawing the two names from a hat!Happy spring and best wishes for a fun and pleasant Easter!! It will be here before you know it!

Wednesday, February 13, 2013

Come on over to our TpT store to pick up a little Valentine treat! For only 1 dollar you can have our 31 page Valentine Articulation Game packet targeting a lot of sweet sounds and even 4 syllable words! Have a nice Valentine's Day, and thank you so much for following our blog and visiting our TpT and TN stores.

Sunday, February 10, 2013

Hi! Do you think that you can use this type of therapy product in your therapy or school classroom? If so, please leave a comment and your email address after this posting and a copy of our new document targeting letter reversals and right vs. left skills will be yours for FREE! We are giving it to the first two followers who leave a comment. Please be quick. I know it's Monday and it's hard to move fast today, but it's FREE! That's a motivator, isn't it? :) LOL!
Have a happy day.
Manda

Why I developed this document: I work on reading, writing and spelling skills during my speech and language therapy sessions and I have often noticed that many of them struggle in two different areas. 1) How to discriminate between their right and left sides correctly. 2) How to identify which side a circle is made in order to form certain letters. This reduced ability to identify which side a circle is made in order to form a letter results in making reading and writing letter reversals throughout our therapy sessions. My own son is a first grader and I have seen him struggle with figuring out his left and right sides and also with needing to correctly identifying what I call, “circle words” like b, d, p, and q correctly. That is why I did some research and confirmed my suspicions by reading several different places that it is common that if a young student is having difficulty processing spatial opposites such as left-right and up-down, that those same challenges can persist into letter and number reversals for beginning readers. Not having good right/left discrimination may be the reason why they are having trouble with learning where the circle goes to form certain letters and their letter reversals during reading and writing. This I’ve especially seen often with the tricky letters of the lowercase b and d’s. In summary, I think that it will benefit a student greatly to learn their left and right and to learn their tricky circle letters to help with their reading and writing, and that is why I put this packet together! You will find over 70 pages of exercises in this packet that focus on teaching the student to 1) Identify their right and left. sides, and 2) Increase their understanding and identification of letters that have circles like, b, d, B, Q, q, D, P, p, and more!

Sincerely,

Manda

Here's the contents of this large packet:Page 2: Clip art credit and Twin Sisters Speech & Language Therapy Copyright page.Page 3 -4: Contents & Directions pagesPage 5: Why I developed this treatment packet.Page 6: Left and right hands. 1) Place your left hand on top of the left hand shown. 2)Place your right hand on top of the right hand shown. 3) Put a “L” on the left hand with your pencil. It is on the left hand side of the page. 4) Put a “R” on the right hand which is on the right side of the page.Page 7: Trace the left and right hand and label.Pages 8 -9: Activities, cueing techniques and fun games to help teach right and left to students.Pages 10-11: Find the objects on the right and left side of boxes and color them.Page 12: Circle the objects on the right or left side of the page. Page 13: Describe the objects given a right or left sided picture to target.Page 14-15: Cut out the pictures and use them to follow directions to place on the winter scene.Page 16 -17: Underline the bears or penguins facing to the right or circle the animals facing to the left.Page 18: Color in the arrows facing to the right.Page 19: Cut out the penguins hat and use it to follow directions identifying body parts.Page 20: Left vs. right direction following page.Page 21-22: Follow directions to color in a boy or girl.Page 23: Complete the maze by following the left or right direction. Page 24-26: How to teach the b and d cueing pages and posters. Page 27: P and Q teaching poster.Page 28: B and D teaching poster.Page 29: Identify which direction the circle is on with the letters of B, P. D, G and Q.Page 30-31: Match the hat to the penguin to complete a upper to lowercase letter match activity.Pages 32-35: Circle the uppercase letters (Seek-n-Find).Pages 36-40: Draw a line from the uppercase letters of B, D, G, Q, & G to the lowercase letters of b, d, g, q, and g.Pages 41-44: Find the lowercase letters (Seek-n-Find).Pages 45-47: Color in or use a paint dotter to find circle letters.Pages 48 -52: Print out the fish blank fish pages to be glued to the back of the letter fish. Cut out 18 fish. Use the fish for memory match or for “fishing” and then placing on the penguin fishing page. Page 53-54: Connect the dots to write upper and lowercase circle letters.Pages 55-56; Draw a line from the upper to lowercase matching letters.Page 57: Fill in the missing uppercase letters to finish the alphabet. Page 58: Fill in the missing lowercase letters to finish the alphabet. Page 59: Write the lowercase letter next to the given uppercase letter.Pages 60-61: Roll the Circle Letter Dice game. Student rolls the dice after it is printed, laminated and put together. The student writes the letter down that is rolled and says the letter aloud too. Page 62: Complete the maze and identify the circle letters seen on the way to the end of the maze.Page 63: Circle letter Tic-Tac-Toe. Say the letter as you take your turn putting down a X or O.Pages 64-65: Connect the dots to finish a word and than draw a line from the word to the picture.Page 66: B and D word crossword puzzle.Page 67: Connect the dots to complete a square game. Student reads a B or D word when each line is drawn.Page s 68-74: Circle Letter Word Reading Game. Words are printed out after the back sheets are glued on them for durability. The words are turned over and placed on the mats. The teacher and student take turns turning over a word to see if they can spell a sentence. The word is read every time. The sentences targeted are for helping to remember circle letters. The first person to spell the sentence of either 1) Letter b starts the word bed or 2) Door starts with the letter d wins the game!

Did you know that the medial /NG/ sound is produced by at least 85% of children by the time they are the age of 3? This sound appears in the middle and at the end of many words in English, but it happens to be a very difficult one for many children to produce. We have also found that the available treatment resources to help to address this tricky sound are quite limited and we ourselves have been struggling to find activities and treatment cards to use with our articulation students. That is why we put together this unit! This comprehensive unit provides /NG/ words from the vowel to conversational level and cueing techniques to get the sound elicited. The sound is presented in medial and final positions of words and we have provided it in writing and with a picture to go with it. Every single flashcard and worksheet has a picture illustrating the targeted NG word! We hope that this packet will end up being the only one that you will ever need now in order to get your articulation students articulating the NG sound! We hope you find the packet both useful and fun. We think that speech therapy should be both of those things. That is why you will find a very wide variety of articulation cards, worksheets, games, and interactive activities in this packet. Enjoy!

Best wishes,Manda & Shanda

Contents of this HUGE Articulation Unit:Page 5: How to produce the /NG/ sound.Page 6: /NG/ sound cueing and placement techniques.Pages 7 -12: Enjoy three different /NG/ game boards, markers, and dice! Use the /NG/ cards in the medial and final positions on the pages 21 to 35 in order to make your way around the fun boards with two or more people.Pages 13-16: 4 colorful and engaging reinforcement pages for putting tokens or paint dots on or for “feeding” the cards through the page in order to engage the younger student in an interactive and entertaining activity while practicing their /NG/ productions.Pages 17-20: Medial /NG/ and Final /NG/ memory match cards. Print out all four pages. Glue the pages with pictures of springs on the back of the picture card pages in order to make a double sided strong memory match cards.Pages 21: Vowel + “NG” warm up page. Pages 22: Vowel + NG cards. Please print, laminate and cut out the 11 cards. Or, print out on cardstock.Page 23: Consonant + NG cards. 11 cards total.Pages 24-25: Medial and Final position /NG/ warm up pages.Pages 26: Short final position /NG/ word cards. 11 cards total.Page 27: 2 Syllable Medial /NG/ word cards. 11 cards total.Page 28: 2 Syllable Final /NG/ word cards. 11 cards total.Page 29: 3 Syllable Medial /NG/ word cards. 11 cards totalPage 30: 3 Syllable Final /NG/ word cards. 11 cards total.Page 31: 4 syllable Final /NG/ word cards. 11 cards total.Page 32: Medial /NG/ phrase cards. 11 cards total.Page 33: Final /NG/ phrase cards. 11 cards total. Page 34: Medial /NG/ sentence cards. 11 cards total. Page 35: Final /NG/ sentence cards. 11 cards total. Page 36 -37: Medial and Final position /NG/ word crossword puzzlesPages 38-39: Dot- To- Dot medial and final /NG/ word game. Student takes turn with the teacher and produces a word aloud before drawing a line from one dot to the next. The goal is to form squares by connecting all four dots. The player who forms the most squares in the end wins.Pages 40-43: Medial and Final position /NG/ word Hangman games. Student guesses the missing letters of words. If one of the letters is not in the puzzle, a part of a stick figure needs to be hung. The goal is to fill in all of the missing letters before a drawing of a whole man is completed. Pages 44-45: Medial and final position sentence pages.Pages 46-49: Coloring sheets. The repetition of various /NG/ words is encouraged while the coloring is completed and enjoyed by the student. Pages 50-53: Cut and glue interactive SPRING pages for encouragement of more /NG/ words.Page 54: Draw a line from the /NG/ sentence to the picture that it describes.Pages 55-56: Medial and Final /NG/ Word Roll Game. Roll a die. Write the word down in the column that the die represents.Pages 57-58: Medial and Final /NG/ Tic-Tac-Toe. Say the word before placing your X or O. Pages 59-61: Flip The Card Game! This Twin Sister Speech & Language Therapy original game targets the production of /NG/ words by having the student flip a card from a deck of cards in order to read the suit and number, and than the word shown in the column represented by the card suit. This fun articulation game will elicit a ton of talking and keep the students engaged the whole time!Pages 62-63: Seek –N-Find pictures! Students are encouraged to say, “I am circling the ___” , when a picture is found. Kids love seek-n-finds and we think that this will be a great way to elicit productions!Pages 64-65: Fun mazes to be completed while repeating /NG/ words.Page 66: Paragraph level medial and final /NG/ work.Page 67: Conversational level medial and final /NG/ work.

Saturday, February 2, 2013

Top 'O the Mornin To You All!This is SUPER SIZED packet (81 pages) full of everything you will need for treating your pre-k to second grade students. It is packed full of a ton of super fun, engaging, and useful speech, language and literacy activities, games, and worksheets that all have a colorful and fun St. Patrick's Day theme to them.

Please refer to the pictures to see examples of some of the wonderful activities and targeted goals included in this packet. If we copied and printed out all three content pages for this packet, than this description would be too long! LOL!!